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'Virtually entire' fashion industry complicit in Uighur forced labour
- mytailorisrich 6y agoI have a feeling that they are conflating cotton from Xinjiang and forced labour... Convenient.
- DanBC 6y agoIt's not a conflation, it's a direct claim. > Despite these abuses, the coalition of human rights groups says many of the world’s leading clothing brands continue to source cotton and yarn produced through a vast state-sponsored system of forced labour involving up to 1.8m Uighur and other Turkic and Muslim people in prison camps, factories and farms in Xinjiang. It says that the forced labour system across the region is the largest internment of an ethnic and religious minority since the second world war. Are they wrong?
- mytailorisrich 6y agoThe question is: Are they right? They are making a claim. It's for them to prove it, not for others to disprove it. The article says that China is the largest cotton producer and that most of Chinese cotton is produced in Xinjiang. So it is very easy to claim that something might be happening in Xinjiang and then say that the entire fashion industry is "complicit". But from the article it seems to me that this is based on second hand accounts reported through the blob of "a coalition" from people who have an interest in attacking China and in making their previous situation in China as bad as possible. They are also mentioning the "Uyghur Human Rights Project". I don't know who they are but their website says that they are based in Washington DC (and they seem to a separatist group that seeks independence for Xinjiang). With the current situation between China and the US, forgive me for thinking that maybe, just maybe, this might be a PR machine in operation (basically psych ops). Whether these claims are in fact true or not, it seems to me that the media are too happy to take everything at face value.